"The government in Portugal has no plans to back down. Although the Netherlands is the European country most associated with liberal drug laws, it has already been ten years since Portugal became the first European nation to take the brave step of decriminalizing possession of all drugs within its borders—from marijuana to heroin, and everything in between.

*** This controversial move went into effect in June of 2001, in response to the country's spiraling HIV/AIDS statistics. While many critics in the poor and largely conservative country attacked the sea change in drug policy, fearing it would lead to drug tourism while simultaneously worsening the country's already shockingly high rate of hard drug use, a report published in 2009 by the Cato Institute tells a different story.

***
Glenn Greenwald, the attorney and author who conducted the research, told Time: "Judging by every metric, drug decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success. It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country."[...]Read more:http://www.alternet.org/drugs/151635/...
***

For the First Time in History, British Medical Journal Calls for the Legalization of ALL Drugs

(RT 15 nov 2016) Doctors have an “ethical responsibility” to back the legalization of drugs, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has advised for the first time.

An editorial in the BMJ, the UK’s most widely-read medical journal, argues that laws against drug use have harmed people across the world, while stressing that drug addiction should be viewed as a health problem and police involvement must end.

The BMJ says the “war on drugs” has failed and “too often plays out as a war on the millions of people who use drugs.”

The call for reform reflects a shift in medical opinion. In June, Britain’s two leading health bodies, the Royal Society for Public Health and the Faculty of Public Health, called for the personal use of drugs to be decriminalized.

The group said criminalizing users deters them from seeking medical help and leads to long-term harm, such as exposure to hard drugs in prison, the breakup of families, and loss of employment.
Drug deaths in Britain are presently at an all-time high.

The BMJ says that the number of heroin fatalities has doubled in the past three years because of government policies. Official figures show that 579 people died from using heroin in 2012, compared with 1,201 in 2015.

THE WAR ON DRUGO- Global Commission on Drug Policy

***

Publicerades den 25 aug. 2014

In
a fairytale setting, the movie explains the disastrous war on drugs by
telling the story of a dragon banished from an ancient kingdom, and how
people that spent time with the dragon were thrown in jail.http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/*** ***

A panel of top global narcotics experts fronted by prominent public figures including Kofi Annan, Richard Branson and eight ex-national presidents, is strongly urging that drugs be a matter for health professionals, not the police, in a new report.

“Overwhelming evidence points to not just the failure of the drug control regime to attain its stated goals but also the horrific unintended consequences of punitive and prohibitionist laws and policies,” states the study, published by the Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP) this week.Läs mer:https://www.rt.com/news/186448-war-drugs-report-gcdp/***

2 kommentarer:

Doctors are starting to realize they have a responsibility to push back against the corrupted logic of drug prohibition.

A new British Medical Journal editorial reflects that growing realization, and calls for doctors to engage in drug policy debates with an eye toward expanding the role of public health and shrinking the role of the carceral state.

As the editors of the prestigious medical journal write, “Doctors and their leaders have ethical responsibilities to champion individual and public health, human rights, and dignity and to speak out where health and humanity are being systemically degraded.

Change is coming, and doctors should use their authority to lead calls for pragmatic reform informed by science and ethics.”